Monday, July 3, 2017

Judge My Playlist, Chapter 11: The Toast of Elvis Costello

ALWAYS a messy lie....

This one represents sort of an accidental double-dip between
this (weird) series and the Bins Project (e.g. the stuff titled, “One Last Pick
thru the Bins,” etc.). I have a couple artists (and it might be two, literally)
for whom I made personal, “best of” CDs and Elvis Costello was one of them. I
guess I worried that I’d forget some of the side stuff unless I burned it into a CD…

…happily, I have a pretty clear idea about what I’m gonna do
when I actually reach Costello’s volume on the Bins Project, and that should
take care of the potential overlap. At any rate…

I fell ass-over-head-in-love with Costello at some point
during high school; friends with more intact memories can probably tell you
when this happened, but I can’t. He’s one of those artists – and these are less
rare than one might think – who doesn’t so much defy classification, as he
doesn’t fit any genre with ease. At least not outside “rock,” that’s broad to
the point of being meaningless. I think that’s a pretty smart lure for people
like me. (“What’s he write?” “Oh, music, I guess.”)

If you know Costello at all, I’m pretty sure (and, yes, just
confirmed) that everything in this collection comes before 1986’s Blood &
Chocolate. This is early stuff basically…and that’s why you won’t see overlap
later. With that, below are some, but not all, of my favorite songs by Elvis
Costello. Hope this gives fans of the man a nice trip down memory lane, and
hope this serves as an appetizer for a huge main course for anyone who’s never
heard him before (i.e., he's still making music, and fucking evolving, too).